The Bicycles – Oh No, It’s Love Review
The Bicycles make delicious pop music. The Toronto-based quartet’s sophomore release, Oh No, It’s Love is pure ear candy, sure to satiate the appetite of any sweet tooth.
The Bicycles list Of Montreal and The Archies as influences, and strains of both can be heard throughout. Oh No is a celebratory pop manifesto, the sum of superb harmonizing, creative bass lines, inventive flourishes and top notch production values. Here we have an album full of short yet saccharine gems that are both accessible and imaginative; songs that are at once haunted and lifted by the ghosts of love affairs past.
Witness the delicate woodwind-tinged introduction of “Once Was Not Enough”, the muted trumpets in “I’ll Wait For You”, and the a capella start to “End of a Good Thing”, and you’ll find The Bicycles are taking chances with their arrangements and throwing a wrench into standard pop construction without forgetting to keep the listener in on the fun. Is that a penny whistle I hear in “Won’t She Be Surprised”? (“Uh huh, oh yeah”, this is a catchy tune.)
Production credit falls to José Contreras (By Divine Right, Meligrove Band) and he has had a measurable impact on The Bicycles’ development since working with them on 2006’s The Good, The Bad and The Cuddly.
Stand-outs included “One Twist Too Much”, with its hand claps, do-do-dos and danceability, and “Can I Keep Calling You Baby”, with its doo-wop backing vocals and country accents. “Green Light” bounces along like a ball on a karaoke screen, and “Oh No, It’s Love”, the love child of Buddy Holly and The Rays’ “Silhouettes”, uses the harmonica to its advantage.
“Sweet Petite” is a clunker thrown in dead centre, whereas “Stop Calling Me Baby” veers into country territory. The Bicycles even try their hand at comedy with the cutesy “Prove It” – “I can’t believe you would shit all over my heart like that!” Philosophers and cult leaders, cover your ears. And I couldn’t shake similarities to Eric Heatherly’s “Counting Flowers on the Wall” when listening to “Oh Yes, It’s Love”, even with the promising stomp-clap introduction.
While its easy to draw comparisons to acts such as Destroyer or Sloan , The Bicycles seem more vulnerable, more genuine. Always high energy and never hesitant, this collection of songs about love is an exploration in falling down and getting up again. All for resiliency and remaining ever hopeful about its well-trodden subject, Oh No, It’s Love is all about how we get to the yes in the end.
MP3:
The Bicycles – Oh No, It’s Love
The Bicycles – One Twist Too Much
Tags: album
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i really like the sounds in my ears. thanks!